To build or not build a wall

[Jon Estes]

Let me ask... Why was God interested an a wall (Nehemiah) being built?

One lesson we can learn is that God wanted to keep the enemy out and protect His own people.

Walls are not our enemy... But walls can keep the enemy at bay.

[Dave Roberts]

Why then do the walls of heaven have gates that are never closed?

[Haruo]

Why do I doubt that either of these proof texts applies to Trump's (or the Democrats') notion of what to do with the Rio Grande and adjacent turf?

In 2006 the Democratic-majority Senate passed a bill to build a 700-mile "wall" or "fence" or "barrier" or whatever you want to call it along significant portions of the US-Mexico border, citing reasoning very similar to what Trump has been citing for building one the entire length of that border. Now Trump has decided that having it his way is more important than paying his employees for their critically needed services, and the Democrats have decided that having it Trump's way (or to listen to some of them, having any wall) is worth not paying the workforce to avoid.

Both sides are full of hyperbole (a very biblical thing to be full of) and the nation is being ill served (and the workers even more illy).

I was amazed at how well Trump stuck to his Teleprompter night before last. If I didn't know better I might have mistaken him for Obama.

In 2013, "Obama shut down the government" for almost this long to force the adoption of the Affordable Care Act.*

I'm less than impressed with the lot of them, and with the press or whatever it's called that feeds us our views of the facts.

* Depending on which Fact Checker you go with, this is rated True, Half True, or Not True. Wait, that was Ted Cruz, not Barack?

[Rvaughn]

[Jon Estes]

[Jon Estes]

[Dave Roberts]

[Sandy]

[JE Pettibone]

[JE Pettibone]

Hauro wrote in part "Now Trump has decided that having it his way is more important than paying his employees for their critically needed services, and the Democrats have decided that having it Trump's way (or to listen to some of them, having any wall) is worth not paying the workforce to avoid.

Ed: Hauro, here you exaggerate what Trump has decided. He has decided that some of our federal employees pay will be held up until the Democrats decide to furnish an amount that his advisors have told him that an adequate barrier will require. The Democrats some of whom previously voted for a wall now claim any additional barrier is immoral, and seem to have decided that not paying our employees in a timely manner is indeed a moral bargaining chip.

[Sandy]

[Jon Estes]

[Jon Estes]

[Sandy]

[Tim Bonney]

[Jon Estes]

[Sandy]

[Jon Estes]

[Rvaughn]

[Haruo]

Don't know if you will see this, Jon, but Sandy didn't liken you to Hitler. He was comparing your thinking and fears on the subject of dangers associated with the US-Mexican border with the thinking and fears of many Americans in the run-up to WWII whose opposition to a more open policy towards Jewish refugees fleeing Germany/Hitler was (arguably) directly complicit, albeit in most cases probably not knowingly or intentionally so, in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent people.

His rhetoric is heated, but he did not say what you apparently thought he said about you.

[Sandy]

[Tim Bonney]

Jon, I hope you don't drop out. In re-reading the thread it appears to me that Sandy is comparing situations in history and not name calling.

It is very hard when the President talks positively about being nationalist and the GOP is even hesitant to censure a congressman from Iowa who is openly a nationalist and supports white supremacists not to start to make comparisons to other times in history when nationalism has led us down horrible paths.

This is far beyond the usual DNC/GOP back and forth. This is the potential highjacking of a major US party by the alt-right.

[Rvaughn]

[KeithE]

[Dave Roberts]

What concerns me about these officers is that they merely kick the can down the road three more years without resolving the legal status of either group. Trump's offer is only a postponement that resolves nothing.